A touchscreen is an electronic visual display for detecting the presence and location of a touch within a display area. Generally, a touch refers to touching the display with a finger or hand but can also include touch contacts with other objects such as a stylus. Touchscreens are common in devices such as game consoles, smartphones, tablet computers, all-in-one computers, other computing devices, mobile devices, point-of-sales terminals, industrial control panels, and the like.
A touchscreen has attributes including functionality in enabling user interaction directly with a display rather than requiring a pointer controlled by a device such as a mouse or touchpad, and functionality in enabling user control without an intermediate handheld device. Touchscreen displays can be attached to computers or terminals for network usage. Touchscreen displays can be useful for digital appliances such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), mobile phone, satellite navigation devices such as (GPS), video games, and the like.
Usage of touchscreens is large and growing due to the popularity of portable and functional electronics including smartphones, information appliances, computers such as tablet computer, video game consoles, and similar electronic systems. Touchscreens enable display of a simple smooth surface and direct user interaction without any intermediate hardware such as a mouse or keyboard between the user and content, thereby enabling elimination of accessories. Touchcreens are highly useful not only for personal communication devices such as smartphones but also in heavy industry, medical devices, and kiosks for displays such as museum displays, and for room automation in which keyboard and mouse systems do not allow suitably accurate, intuitive, and rapid user interaction with display content.